has been raised from the dead" amount to a solemn, and yet simple admonition, bidding us not let go the stupendous hope of the Christian Church; but to bear diligently in mind that we are the subjects of a Being who died in ignominy, but who shall reign in majesty, and who shall exalt to the possession of extended empire all who bow down before his cross?

Truly, the more the mind ponders over the combination of ideas. which are gathered into this apparently brief and superfluous message of Paul to Timothy, the more will it be struck with the beauty and consolation it conveys. Can a believer be told that Christ Jesus has been raised from the dead, without finding the whole array of the mediatorial work, all its wrestlings-all its glories-all its victories, pass rapidly before him; inasmuch as the memory of the risen Saviour does presuppose the immediate knowledge of a dying Saviour? And how can a believer be reminded of that Being who thus won to himself the honours of God, by spurning the trammels which bound all those whom sin has made heirs of corruption-how, I say, can he be reminded that this Being is the very mighty one of whom glorious things are spoken as of the seed of David, without feeling his spirits hurried into the august palaces which are yet to be built for the saints of the Most High, and beholding the waste places of the earth enamelled with freshness, with fountains bursting forth amid the sands of the desert, and piety and purity encircled in one girdle, and the powers of unrighteousness chained and subjugated, and the teeming tribes that shall possess this earth; and all these marvellous revolutions produced under the government of him who describes himself under such terms as these-" I am the root and the offspring of David-the bright and morning star." Then I ask, whether there be not, in considerations and reflections of this expansive character, a sufficiency of proof that the connexion of the fact of Christ having been born of the seed of David, and Christ having been raised from the dead, gives to the resurrection of the Redeemer much of its most sublime and solemn character that it invests it with those properties which render it, to creatures constituted as ourselves, the most prized and precious article of belief-and that, consequently, suggesting, as it manifestly does, the gigantic thought of a world redeemed by the risen Mediator from the tyranny of Satan, and that same world reanimated beneath the Redeemer's dominion with a loveliness tenfold more lovely than that which sparkled amid the young and yet unblighted Eden-I ask you, whether there be not, in all these combinations of instructive thought, enough to vindicate from the charge of unmeaning truism, and to stamp with importance this declaration of Paul to Timothy, "Remember that Jesus Christ of the seed of David, was raised from the dead according to my gospel."

Now, I have dwelt at sufficient length on the first head of discourse; and much that I have advanced in illustration of the importance of the clause, " of the seed of David,” applies equally to the other," according to my gospel," which I would, in the second place, exhibit to you, as giving strength and emphasis to St. Paul's commemoration of the death and resurrection of our Saviour.

You remember the strong terms in which St. Paul, when writing to the Corinthians, states the importance of the resurrection as an article of the Christian faith. He may be said to resolve the whole of our religion, all its truth-all its value-all its beauty -into the one fact that Christ Jesus had been raised from the dead. "If Christ be not raised"-thus it is he speaks-" your faith is in vain, you are yet in your sins: then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished." And it is in accordance with such passages as these, parallels of which are of most frequent occurrence, that I shall consider myself warranted in pronouncing the gospel of Christ Jesus the gospel of the resurrection. We are so accustomed, from our earliest infancy, to believe implicitly the doctrine of the soul's immortality-it is taught us, I might almost say, in our cradles—and so wound up with all the institutions of religion, and all the associations of life, that we pass into a comparative forgetfulness of its awful stature; and receiving it as a thing of course, overlook it as a truth of the most stupendous dimensions. We forget, amid the multiplicity of truth which even natural religion will now profess to put forth of a future state, that the proudest and most acute philosophy which ever arose amidst the wisest of Heathen nations wrestled with strugglings which were mighty, but which were wholly ineffectual to throw themselves into the deep regions which lay beyond the grave, and to snatch some fragments of knowledge which might be held up to the admiration and gaze of a world lying in ignorance. We forget that always, previous to the appearance of Christ on earth, and independent of the assistance of divine communication, there certainly have been men gifted above their fellows, who pondered deeply on futurity, and grappled with the mysterious shadows of some coming destinies; yet a luminous doubt was, after all, the very summit of their attainments, and a splendid conjecture the highest result of their most laborious searchings after truth. Even if human science had revealed, with the general developement of the fact, that man, frail as he seems and feeble, doth yet carry in himself a spark of celestial fire, which can no more be quenched than that Deity which is the light of the universe; still, that bone should come again to bone-that the dust which is scattered to the winds of heaven shall be compounded once more, into shape and symmetry, and that the rude heaps of the charnel house shall resolve themselves into living forms-that

corruption shall put on incorruption, and mortal put on immortality-Oh, there never would be philosophy which could master this: it was above it- it was beyond it: and while familiarity with the truth takes off something of the strangeness of the marvel; yet I pray you to remember, when you see a grave prepared, and the coffin lowered, and the tears of the mourners almost dried up by the brilliant thought that the body of the brother or sister which they thus commit to so cold a custody shall not only moulder or waste away, but shall stir at length in its narrow home, and throw off, as with a giant's strength, the pondrous burthen of the sepulchre and come forth with that body glorified and pnrified which is now encompassed with all the dishonours of death-when, I say, you behold a spectacle like this, a spectacle which would be deemed a most unaccountable prodigy if it were not of common occurrence -Oh, it is the soul's loftiests triumph-a triumph over the wreck of all that is material and sensible-a triumph over bone, and flesh, and sinew, dislocated, and decomposed, and shattered;-then I pray you to give the honour alone where the honour is due, to ascribe the victory to the true and actual conqueror, and to remember that the gospel of Christ is the gospel of the resurrection; and that uutil the Redeemer appropriated the characted to himself there was never a being who could have dreampt in the widest dreams of enthusiasm of uttering such words as these "I am the resurrectiou and the life."

By stating the fact, that life and immorality have been brought to light by the gospel, to which I suppose St. Paul to allude when he speaks of Christ Jesus as "raised from the dead according to my gospel"-I suppose him designing to remind his son Timothy, not so much of the simple truth of the Saviour's resurrection, as of the colouring and character which this event gave to the whole system of Christianity: and however meagre might sound the bare mention of Christ's emancipation from the power of the tomb, yet when we have reason to remember that this truth interweaves itself with every part of our religion-that the whole fabric of our faith is virrually based upou it-that independent of this, whatsoever there be of promise loses all its attractiveness, whatsoever there be of precept loses all its impressiveness-there is no longer any thing unnecessary in the apostolic message, though one scarcely inferior to the Apostle to the party addressed. Hence the surprise we might have felt at St. Paul's writings to Timothy, "Remember that Christ Jesus was raised from the dead,” vanished utterly, and is lost, when we find him adopting such terms as these " Remember that Christ Jesus, of the seed of David, was raised from the dead according to my Gospel." The latter clause. may in fact, be said to identify the gospel with the resurrection: and certainly I am prepared to argue that the more you regard the gospel of Christ as the gospel of the Resurrection, the more you will under

stand the gosple, and the more you will be consoled by the gospel. Is not the resurrection mixed up with the earliest elements of the gosple? It is not said that "we are buried with Christ— that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in the newness of life?" Is not that power whereby sinners are converted, and through which they are held up and established, literally defined as the resurrection power? For does not St. Paul pray on behalf of his Ephesian converts," that they may know the exceeding greatness of God's power to usward who believe, according to the working of his mighty power, which he wrought in Christ when he raised him from the dead?" And is it not, moreover, the Christian's hope -nay, even the Christian's title to future blessedness, so completely the result of the resurrection, that the resurrection may be represented as the acting and generating principle? For what else can Peter denote when he speaks of God as having "begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible, undefiled, and that fadeth not away "I ask you, whether it be undeniable that the Redeemer's resurrection enters most intimately into every part of the system of salvation; and whether it be an unmeaning message which enjoins the remembrance that "Jesus Christ has risen from the dead according to my gospel?" Is it not, rather, a compendious memento of all that is contained in the gospel? And if a man, by remembering the resurrection, remembers that it is "according to the gospel"-that it, in fact, accords with the gospel-so that it unites itself, blends itself, compounds itself, with every iota of gospel truth, then the gospel will always bear to him the richest aspect of which it is capable; and he will look forward to the resurrection as the full consummation of the saint's blessedness, and his thoughts will rest on the new heavens and the new earth springing, by a glorious resurrection, from the ruins of the old.

If St. Paul was desirous of winning Christians from the earth, by what motive did he stimulate them? By the resurrection. "If he then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth at the right hand of God." If this apostle studied to animate himself by spreading before his view some sparkling object of pursuit, whither turns he for such object? To the resurrection. "If by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead." If the Saviour exhibits the privileges of those who by faith are incorporated into his mystic body, whence does he derive his terms and expressions? From the resurrection. "Whoso eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day." Who, after the introduction of such particulars as these, can fail to join in the desire which St. Paul has expressed on his own behalf, " that I may know Christ, and the power of his resurrection:" and who,

when he finds the character of that knowledge after which the apostle most ardently strove, can marvel that he should charge his own son in the faith, to live in memory of the truth, that according to the gospel which had been preached to him, Christ Jesus, of the seed of David, had been raised?

I leave to you to collect the several particulars of our discourse, and joining together our observations on these two clauses, "of the seed of David," and "according to my gospel," decide whether they give not a beauty and emphasis to St. Paul's message to Timothy, which warrant their being called the very nerves and sinews of the passage. Oh! it is much to think of Jesus Christ as rising from the dead, and thereby vindicating to himself all that magnificent empire which scripture promises to the seed of David. And it is much, moreover, to consider ourselves interested in the declaration of the Apostle, which proclaims the final overthrow of death, which so interweaves its every portion with the glowing prospects of a restored and renovated creation, that it may be said to utter constantly such language as this of the prophet-" I will ransom them from the power of the grave; I will redeem them from death: O, death, I will be thy plague; O, grave, I will be thy destruction." Yes, truly, all this is much; and it is no idle thing that we be bidden to try to bear it in memory.

I trust not myself to speak on a topic which may almost be said to have split the Christian world into factions-I mean the doctrine of the first and second resurrections-whether or no the buried saints of the Most High shall be personally and corporeally present, when the heir of David's line ascends that throne which we can now only know from the gorgeous spectacle of prophetic architecture; yet we nothing doubt that they shall be delightfully conscious of all that is passing in this regenerated universe-that if they tread not the scene of their former pilgrimage, and revisit not the home of their former mortality, purified from the corruption with which sin hath stained God's workmanship, still they shall bend down from those abodes of peace, in which they await the body's resurrection, and contemplate with unspeakable gladness the fresh and fair face of this earth's new scenery, when it shall have been transformed into a radiant theatre for the display of the Mediator's triumphs. In this hope we repose ourselves. If indeed, as the Apostle expresses it, we are children of the resurrection, then may we believe that, in all which is yet to arrive of illustrious allotment to the church, we, too, in one way or other, shall obtain a share. And, even of the body still slumber, awaiting the trumpet summons of judgment, yet shall the spirit scan and survey and rejoice in the establishment of Messiah's sovereignty over the wide-spread tribes of the human population. Brethren, remember that Christ Jesus, of the seed of David, has been raised from the dead. Remember that your own interests in